Monday, 10 December 2012

No end to eight-year land struggle in Battambang [The rich and the powerful are the worst land-grabbers]

Monday, 10 December 2012Phnom Penh Post

David Boyle

A house built on cleared and cultivated land in the middle of the Prey
Trolach Community Forest in Battambang province. Photograph supplied

In the latest chapter of what is proving to be an arduous struggle to
protect a government demarcated Community Forest in Battambang province,
36 hectares of the land have reportedly been given over to outsiders
including a military official.

Not a month has passed since 825
families celebrated what should have been a definitive decision in
mid-November by the Forestry Administration to recognise the 1,335
hectare Prey Trolach Community Forest following an eight-year struggle
to have the area properly delineated.

But even at the time, just
days after the drone of chainsaws clearing vast swathes of the forest
finally died down, villagers said they were wary that the fight was
over. Now it seems they had good reason to be sceptical.

A
source with intimate knowledge of the dispute has told the Post that a
military official was earlier this month granted a land title for 8.3353
hectares in the Community Forest. Between the official and three
civilians who were also granted titles, 36 hectares of the Community
Forest in total have been handed over, the source said.

Photos
obtained by the Post yesterday show that the area in question, already
known to have been clear felled so as to plant banana and corn, has now
been harvested, while the Roka Kiri district governor has said he also
has been alerted to the apparently illegal concessions and is
investigating.

John Macgregor, a project adviser for the
livelihood group After the Flood, said yesterday that it appeared the
families had been undermined by powerful interests receiving government
protection.

“The community is extremely unhappy, they have
worked for eight years on this, an exhaustive process, and in six months
a bunch of land grabbers with high level protection have showed up and
started taking the fruits of their labour out of their hands,” he said.

Roka
Kiri district chief Pich Malai said that after he heard about the
alleged titles within the protected area of Prey Trolach he
unsuccessfully attempted to contact Community Forest Management
Committee chief Im Oeun, stressing that there were no official documents
to prove that this land had actually been cut.

“I have assigned
one of my deputies to check it out and I will meet him tomorrow so that
I will have some information about this case,” he said.

Oeun could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Ly
Chou Beang, director of the Forestry Administration’s Battambang
provincial cantonment, denied titles had been issued and said after his
forces intervened to make land grabbers sign contracts agreeing to stop,
the problem had gone away.

“The land of the Community Forest is
still there. No one touched it recently. My officials will tell me when
there is land clearing in the community forest,” he said.

No comments:

Between Tea Banh and Hun Sen, who would you support? គាំទ្រ ហ៊ុន សែន ឬ ទា បាញ់?

Between Hun Sen and Sok An, who would you support? គាំទ្រ ហ៊ុន​ សែន ឬ សុខ អាន?

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